RED CHINA: The Numbers Game

Barely two months ago, in a moment of
unwonted honesty, Red China's braggart overlords admitted that the
economic achievements of 1958's Great Leap Forward had been vastly
inflated, and revised their 1959 production goals downward. But the
price of truth proved too painful. Fortnight ago, during the
celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Red takeover in China,
Premier Chou En-lai complained: "The imperialists ridicule our adjusted
1959 plan as a 'big leap backward' . . . Obviously, it is a continued
great leap forward on the basis of the exceptionally big...